I’ll never understand why at the age of 14 you’re asked what you want to be when you grow up and to pick subjects based on that answer.

How many of you are in the career of your 14 year old choice right now? Are you even close?

Perhaps you had the white picket fence and family plan all figured out for by the time you were 25. Has this happened or did life throw something unexpected at you?

Or maybe you’re like me and still have days where you have absolutely no bloody idea.

Being in your 20’s is friggin hard.

We leave school with this idea that as long as you follow a timeline of education, work, marriage and kids in a round about order, well everything else will fall into place. A complete life has a series of boxes that must be ticked in order to be fulfilled and it’s a case of going through the motions.

Well the motions are the hard part. Geez I’m 28 and still don’t understand myself as an individual. What do I want? What do I need? How do I get it? When should I have it by? Will it make me happy? What if it doesn’t?

The only thing I know for certain is that by doing and living and taking a chance, we can start to figure things out bit by bit. No school subject is going to unveil you as a person; you have to do that yourself.

Your 20’s is the time for no longer ignoring those questions your gut throws at you. That sickly feeling you get when you admit to yourself “This isn’t what I thought it would be, I want to stop because it doesn’t serve me a purpose anymore”. You know what i’m talking about. We’ve started to stop holding onto things and be brave enough to say no. Goodbye course I no longer enjoy, see ya later boyfriend who uses me for my money; I feel scared and vulnerable making this decision but i’m doing it anyway.

Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable is a skill we’ve started to master.

Most of us fall in love and commit to a relationship that takes sacrifices on our part and challenges us in a way we’ve never experienced before. It’s no longer fuck buddies and texting different boys throughout the week; these men are actually living with us and we’re sharing a bathroom with them! Holy shit we poop in the same toilet!

Children are no longer something we associate with our annoying little brother or sister, they’re these things our friends are making and we’re popping one or two out ourselves. The role starts to shift from Don’t Give A Toss Teenager Because Mum Has All The Answers to Mum or Aunty or Wife or Manager or Colleague or Bill Payer.

Fuck it’s scary!

Hard choices have to be made. We recognise the friendships that no longer serve us and have to be ok with the fact that people grow distant or change. Or that they are simply toxic. You can’t just select a best friend in school and stick with them till the very end, writing BFF4EVA on every single notepad you own. These people must be your people. You realise the importance of being the environment around you and what that actually means. Drama isn’t exciting any more.

Our 20’s is where we begin to find ourselves.

We find our voice, we start to use it and more importantly, we believe in what we’re saying. We make mistakes and react badly to them; taking criticism personally instead of using it to self improve. We do this because we don’t know any better. It’s all a learning curve and oh my is it uncomfortable. The big bad world seems like nothing compared to all of the stuff we must go through as an individual.

For the first time we truly understand that life isn’t one long straight path where you’re headed in the same direction. It’s winding, it’s forever changing and occasionally you’ll circle back or get lost and go round and round in the same spot and get so annoyed you’ll question what is the purpose of life anyway because I feel pretty crappy right now. How do I get out of this mess?

We have become a real live grown up just like that.

All of the late curfews we begged for, the sneaky drinks we paid some random to get for us and the Prince Charming we so desperately wanted to meet we’d planned our kids names before he’d even put a ring on it; we have it.

We have it all and it scares the living daylights out of us. We scare the living daylights out of ourselves too because we know there is so much more to come and it’s a hell of a lot more involved than just some boxes that need ticking.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that all of this is normal because we’re a 20 year old something. And life is just getting interesting.